Free Republic

A central detail in James Talarico's political origin story has been questioned in the New York Times just days out from the midterm elections as he battles to become the first Democratic Texas senator since 1993. Talarico, a former educator who currently serves as a Texas State representative, launched his original bid for office after spending two years in a San Antonio classroom as a Teach For America fellow from 2011 to 2013, when he was in his early 20s. In his initial campaign, Talarico claimed that he taught as many as 45 students at a time and that classroom...

New York City's socialist experiment is going great. So great, in fact, that the city's comptroller, Mark Levine, is sounding the alarm after 30,000 private-sector jobs left the city in just two months. Levine calls the trend "concerning."Here's more:Private-sector employment dropped by 23,000 in September after losing 7,400 jobs in August — with gigs in finance and tourism leading the private sector in declines, according to a new report by City Comptroller Mark Levine’s office.“Despite a relatively strong tourism season, Leisure & Hospitality employment fell 7,700 in September alone and is down 17,000 jobs over the past year,” Levine wrote,...

An immigration enforcement operation in Hillcrest on Monday morning resulted in an arrest and left some residents fearful about leaving their homes. Video provided to News 12 appears to show Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Mirror Lake Road around 8 a.m. Witnesses said the presence of federal agents in the neighborhood caused concern among those who live there. Arly, a Spring Valley resident, said neighbors were frightened by what they witnessed. “My neighbors are scared. They don't want to get out,” Arly said. Adding that parents were afraid to put their children on the bus because of the presence....

Who edits this stuff? A rant from the New York Times editorial board compares the Trump administration to some of history’s worst dictatorships:The revocation of a political opponent’s citizenship has long been a tool of authoritarian repression.The Soviet Union stripped Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the dissident author, of his citizenship in 1974 and deported him to West Germany. Czechoslovakia revoked the citizenship of Milan Kundera, another celebrated author, in 1979. East Germany and Romania, under Communist rule, took similar steps against critics, as did Chile under Augusto Pinochet, Greece under its military dictatorship, Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini. More recently,...

New York City’s (NYC) socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani advised illegal aliens on how to dodge U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and instructed them on their rights. In a video posted to X with English subtitles, Mamdani, speaking in Spanish, explained that ICE agents “cannot legally enter” private spaces unless they have a judicial order, and that illegal migrants have the right to be silent. “If you encounter ICE, these are your rights,” Mamdani said. “First, ICE cannot legally enter private spaces without a judicial order. These spaces include your home, hospitals, churches, and private areas of your workplace.”...

An internal document from the group that organized Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander’s trip to the West Bank describes Israel as "genocidal[SIC]" and engaged in "ethnic cleansing[SIC]" and says the trip’s goal is to build support for "international intervention" against Israel. The document, labeled "INTERNAL DOCUMENT: DO NOT SHARE OR CIRCULATE," is a set of talking points from Protect the Harvest, which recruits foreigners to help make Israel look bad as part of its smear campaign. Lander did his part, posting to social media that he had been "detained" by the Israel Defense Forces. Lander is the Democratic nominee for...

Hizzoner, meanwhile, regularly appears in numerous cleverly crafted TikTok videos per day — prompting insiders to lament about where his priorities lie. “The mayor and his team are obsessed with becoming a content farm, often delaying or can-kicking boring governmental meetings so the mayor and his staff can hold pitch sessions for social media videos,” one source who often works with City Hall told The Post. He had “one” job. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has signed just one bill into law in 10 months since taking office — leaving critics to wonder if the millennial mayor is more interested in social...

A motorist was killed in a drive-by shooting on the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan Tuesday night, according to cops and sources. The driver was found shot in the head on the westbound upper level of the crossing around 7 p.m. after officers responded to reports of a crash, the Port Authority Police Department and sources said. He was rushed to Englewood Hospital in New Jersey and pronounced dead, according to law enforcement sources. The suspect fled and remained on the loose late Tuesday. Investigators are pouring over security camera footage for clues into the slaying. Nobody else was injured...

New York plans to drop part of its statewide ban on Native American imagery for school sports logos. The Department of Education said Monday it will recommend that the Board of Regents, which adopted the 2023 mandate and issued a June 2025 deadline for rebranding, saying districts that didn't comply could lose state aid, now leave those decisions to local school districts. "Legal challenges brought by Long Island school boards against the Board of Regents' regulation addressing Indigenous mascots have been unsuccessful. Most recently, a federal appeals court dismissed Wantagh's challenge, finding that the district could not pursue its claims...

The Republicans have been doing very well in the debates this election season. We've seen Republican Mike Rogers hand Democrat Abdul El-Sayed his head in the Michigan Senate debate. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) pummeled Democrat Troy Jackson in all four of their debates in the Maine Senate race. Most recently, we saw Republican Michele Tafoya curb-stomp Democrat Peggy Flanagan in the Minnesota Senate debate. But perhaps the best debate of them all came from former federal prosecutor Saritha Komatireddy (R) in the race for Attorney General of New York. She crushed the current AG, Democrat Letitia James. Given all the...

Labor unions are all about two things: money and control. The problem is that they go about achieving their aims through coercive means, often political, sometimes violence. In New York, for example, the union bigwigs have contrived to get their allies in the legislature to enact a bill designed to keep workers from learning about their right to opt out of paying dues to public-sector unions under the Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision. I discussed that bit of skullduggery here. In Vermont, the same political alliance has placed on the ballot a proposed amendment to the state constitution,...

Left-wing Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is being slammed over a resurfaced Columbia University research paper he authored with a “racist and eugenics outcome” that concluded Arab women should only breed with their own kind for optimal health outcomes. El-Sayed — who has repeatedly called himself a physician though he never completed his medical school residency — warned in the 2011 paper published in the “Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health” of the hazards of “interethnic mating” — which he insisted increased the risk of children being born premature.

DSA leaders are working behind the scenes with their endorsed candidates to pressure Jeffries on progressive priorities WASHINGTON—Hakeem Jeffries is closing in on the Speaker’s gavel, but his path to power runs directly through an expanding group of Democratic Socialists who want major policy concessions in exchange for their support.Emerging from primary victories in heavily Democratic districts, a slate of freshman candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America is organizing behind the scenes to extract commitments from party leadership to advance far-left priorities. With Democrats favored to win a thin House majority in November, an organized faction could hold...

New study released ahead of November election shows 'Project Beacon' saving ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars per winter. Massachusetts could pivot in the direction of affordable and reliable energy by expanding on existing natural gas capacity, according to a new study that says ratepayers could save $367 million per winter. Since many of those same ratepayers are also voters, that’s a figure that should pique their interest. The Fiscal Alliance Foundation, a nonprofit headquartered in Boston, highlights the benefits of “Project Beacon” in its study released just ahead of the state’s gubernatorial election. The projected savings for homeowners and...

The site will support more than 1,000 highly skilled manufacturing jobs in the state’s semiconductor industry, said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. Japan will invest up to $21 billion to build two chip factories in New York under a trade agreement with U.S. President Donald Trump, as Washington seeks to expand domestic semiconductor production. They will be jointly owned by the U.S. government and Japanese interests and operated by GlobalFoundries, the company said on Wednesday. Construction of the first factory is scheduled to begin this year, with chip production expected in ⁠2029. GlobalFoundries executives said the partners will decide whether...

An off-duty NYPD detective was stabbed 10 times by a pair of illegal immigrants despite repeatedly identifying himself as a cop – then chased the thugs for two blocks while barefoot despite his injuries, Bronx prosecutors said Wednesday. The revelation came as the two accused attackers – D’Angelo Caraballo and Sneinder Mejia – were arraigned on attempted murder charges in the Oct. 2 assault on hero cop Jose Mercedes and ordered held without bail in Bronx court. “When defendant Mejia was stabbing him numerous times, [Mercedes] attempted to place him under arrest,” Bronx Assistant District Attorney Paul Irace said in...

New York City Council is expected to outlaw horse-drawn carriages starting in June 2028, a ban that also has the support of the mayor. The legislation follows the death of a teenager who fell off a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park this year, and ongoing concerns about inhumane treatment of the horses.

On Tuesday, incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) faced her Republican challenger, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, in the only debate of the New York governor's race. Spectrum News hosted the event for what many consider a toss-up race. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Bruce Blakeman are nearly neck-and-neck as they head into the gubernatorial election’s only debate Tuesday, a stunning new poll found.Democrat Hochul leads the Republican Nassau executive 47% to 44%, a Pollfinity survey released Tuesday found.The poll found about 6% of voters were undecided, while another 3% planned to cast their ballots for others.It went as expected. Blakeman came...

Rachel Timoner, Senator Schumer’s ‘Rabbi’, had spent the years since Oct 7 denouncing Israel. The trendy leftist clergywoman had been active with anti-Israel groups such as J Street and T’ruah, and had co-founded the New York Jewish Agenda leftist organization alongside Sharon Kleinbaum who had faced an exodus from her ‘temple’ after saying prayers for Hamas terrorists. When Prime Minister Netanyahu came to speak at the UN, Timoner addressed a rally “to demand that Netanyahu be held accountable for his war crimes” and blamed antisemitic attacks on Jews by Muslims, including a Muslim terror attack meant to kill Jewish preschoolers,...

A democratic socialist congressional candidate claimed it “doesn’t even matter” that the illegal immigrant wounded by ICE agents has a violent criminal history — and accused the NYPD of villainizing him. DSA darling Darializa Avila-Chevalier told lefty blogger Hasan Piker that accused gangbanger Oscar Belgal was just being a good dad when he tried to flee the feds with his 5-year-old son in the car in the Bronx on Thursday — and was somehow a victim of his own rap sheet being revealed. “I was just so angry,” Avila-Chevalier, the Democratic candidate for the 13th Congressional District, said of hearing...